It is often necessary, in the administration of intravenous fluids to a patient, to know exactly how much fluid a particular patient has received over a given period of time. This is particularly true in emergency resuscitation of a patient having a large blood loss. The amount of fluid accepted by a patient can give important indications as to the extent and the nature of the injury to the patient. Moreover, knowledge of the amount of fluid intravenously accepted by a patient can have a direct bearing on the nature of the treatment administered to the patient.
Current methods for measuring flow of intravenous fluid into a patient are labor intensive, and fraught with error. In particular, intravenous fluid such as blood, plasma, and saline solution are contained in bags in carefully metered amounts, and hung from a fluid administering support structure. The monitoring of the fluid infused in the patient is accomplished through visual observation and manual calculation by a nurse or other qualified person. The liquid volume of the bags is monitored visually as the liquid is infused into the patient. When one of the bags is emptied, it is removed and another is hung on the support structure to replace it. The replacement of bags, and the volume of each of the bags that are removed or added, are recorded on a "nursing sheet". From this sheet, the volume of flow over a particular period of time is calculated. As will be appreciated, this procedure can be very cumbersome, especially in emergency situations.